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Friday, 18 January 2013

Sullivan's Blog Tour - Let Me Be The One (Sullivan's #6)

Enjoy the following excerpt for LET ME BE THE ONE…

Fifteen years ago, Palo Alto High School

Victoria Bennett couldn’t take her eyes off Ryan
Sullivan, who was laughing with some of the guys on his baseball team, as she
headed through the high school parking lot toward the art store on University
Avenue.

None of the other girls in her tenth-grade class could
take their eyes off him, either, so at least she didn’t stick out. Not for that
reason, anyway. Her clay-stained fingers and clothes—along with the “new girl”
sign she felt like she was wearing during her first few weeks at every new
school—did that with no help whatsoever from Ryan...or his ridiculously good
looks.

Normally, she could have gotten over his pretty face
without much trouble. As an artist, she always worked to look beneath the
surface of things, to try to find out what was really at the heart of a
painting or sculpture or song. That went for people, too. Especially boys who,
as far as she could tell, only ever told a girl what they wanted to hear for
one reason.

No, what had
her stuck on Ryan Sullivan was the fact that he was always laughing. Somehow,
without being the class clown, he had a gift for putting people at ease and
making them feel good.

Before she could catch herself, she put her fingers to
her lips...and wondered what it would feel like if he kissed her.

She yanked her hand away from her mouth. Not just because
dreaming of his kisses was borderline pathetic given the utter unlikelihood of
that scenario, but because she needed to stay focused on her art.

She wasn’t just another tenth grader mooning over the
hottest boy in school.

She was studying her muse.

Vicki had never been much interested in sculpting formal
busts before. Old, dead, overly serious guys in gray didn’t really do it for
her. But it had only taken a few minutes near Ryan at lunch her first day on
campus to be inspired to capture his laughter in clay. She wished she could get
closer to all that easy joy—if only to figure out how to translate it from her
mind’s eye to the clay beneath her fingers.

Yes, she thought with a small smile, she was perfectly
willing to suffer for her art. Especially if it meant staring at Ryan Sullivan.

The light turned from red to green and she could have
picked up her pace and made it across the street. Only, she’d been having such
trouble getting the corners of the eyes and mouth just right on her Laughing
Boy sculpture. Knowing there wasn’t a chance that Ryan or his friends would
notice her, rather than leaving the school grounds, she closed the distance
between them in as nonchalant a manner as she could, while surreptitiously
watching him from beneath the veil of the bangs that had grown too long over
her eyes during the summer.

A few seconds later, his friends high-fived him and
walked away. Ryan bent down to finish packing up a long, narrow black bag at
his feet, which she guessed held his baseball stuff.

What, she wondered on an appreciative sigh at the way the
muscles on his forearms and shoulders flexed as he picked up the bag, would
happen if she talked to him? And what would he say if she outright asked him to
pose for her?

She was on the verge of laughing out loud at her crazy
thoughts when she heard a squeal coming from the parking lot. In a split second
she realized an out-of-control car was whipping straight toward Ryan.

There wasn’t time to plan, or to think. Vicki sprinted
across the several feet between them and threw herself at him.

“Car!”

Fortunately, Ryan’s natural athleticism kicked in right
away. Even though she was the one trying to pull him out of the way, less than
a heartbeat later he was lifting her and practically throwing her across the
grass before leaping to cover her body with his.

She scrunched her eyes tightly shut as the car careened
past, so close that she could feel the hairs on her arms lifting in its wake.
Breathing hard, Vicki clung to Ryan. Wetness moved across her cheeks and she
belatedly realized tears must have sprung up from landing so hard on the grass.

The seconds ticked by as if in slow motion, one hard,
thudding heartbeat after another from Ryan’s chest to hers and then back again
from hers to his. He was so strong, so warm, so beautifully real. She wanted to
lie like this with him forever, more intimately, closer than she’d ever been
with another boy.

Only, voices were rising in pitch all around her, and
suddenly, the reality of what had just happened hit.

Oh my God, they’d both almost died!

She was starting to feel faint when he lifted his head
and smiled down at her.

“Hi, I’m Ryan.”

The way he said it, as if she didn’t already know who he
was, pierced through her shock. He acted like it was normal to be sprawled over
a girl. Which, she suddenly realized, it probably was. For him.

Definitely not for her, though.

Her lips were dry and she had to lick them once, twice,
before saying, “I’m Victoria.” The words, “But my friends call me Vicki,”
slipped out before she could pull them back in.

His smile widened and her heart started beating even
faster. Not from shock this time, but from pure, unfettered teenage hormones
kicked into overdrive by his beautiful smile.

“Thank you for saving my life, Vicki.” A moment later,
his smile disappeared as he took in her tear-streaked cheeks. The eyes that
she’d seen filled with laughter so many times during the first two weeks of
school grew serious. “I hurt you.”

She would have told him no, and that she was fine, but
all breath and words were stolen from her the instant he brushed his fingertips
over her cheeks to wipe away her tears.

Somehow, she managed to shake her head, and to get her
lips to form the word no, even though no sound followed.

His laughing eyes were dark now, and more intense than
she’d ever seen them. “Are you sure? I didn’t mean to land so hard on you.”

“I’m—”

How was she supposed to keep her brain working when he’d
begun the slow, shockingly sweet process of running his hands over the back of
her skull, and then down to her shoulders and upper arms?

One more word. That was all she needed to get out to
answer his question.

“—fine.”

“Good.” His voice was deeper, richer, than any of the
other fifteen-year-old boys. “I’m glad.”

But as he stared down at her, his expression continued to
grow even more intense and she found herself holding her breath.

Was he going to kiss her now? Had her life just turned
into the quintessential after-school-special fantasy, the one where the artsy
girl caught the eye of the jock and the whole school was turned upside down by
their unlikely but ultimately perfect and inevitable pairing?

“One day, when you need me most, I promise I’ll be there
for you, Vicki.”

Oh. She swallowed hard. Oh my.

He hadn’t given her a kiss...but his promise felt more
important than a mere kiss would have been.

Before she realized it, he was standing up again and
holding out a hand to help her up, too. Instantly missing his heat, the hard
muscles pressing into her softer ones, all the lies she’d been trying to tell
herself about Ryan simply being a muse scattered out of reach.

“Can I walk you home?”

Surprised that he wanted to spend more time with her, she
quickly shook her head.

He looked equally surprised by her response, likely
because no girl on earth had ever turned him down.

“No, I can’t walk you home?”

She fumbled to explain. “I’m not going home. I was
actually heading over to the art store to pick up some supplies for a new
sculpt—”

She barely stopped herself from rambling on about her
latest project. Why would Ryan Sullivan care? Besides, she reminded her racing
heart with brutal honesty, he probably had some pretty cheerleaders waiting on
him. And they wouldn’t need an out-of-control car to get him to lie down on top
of them.

Because no matter how tempting it was to believe that she
had suddenly been cast in a happy-ever-after fairytale romance, the truth was
that getting that close to Ryan had been nothing more than a fluke of fate.

And Vicki remained the star of her artsy, and often
lonely, move-to-a-new-town-every-year-with-her-military-family teenage life.

Only, for some strange reason she couldn’t understand,
Ryan wasn’t running in the opposite direction yet. Probably because he felt
like he owed her after she’d saved his life. After all, hadn’t he just told
her that he would be there for her one day when she really needed him?

“What are you getting supplies for?” He asked the
question as though he were truly interested, not just acting like it because he
felt he should.

“I’m making a—” Wait, she couldn’t tell him what she was
making. Because she was sculpting him. “I work with clay. Lately, I’ve
been trying to capture specific facial expressions.”

“Which ones?”

Never in a million years did she think she’d ever speak
to him, let alone have this long a conversation. But, what shocked her most of
all was just how comfortable she felt with him. Even with all of her teenage
hormones on high alert, Ryan was, simply, the easiest person she’d ever been
around.

And she wanted more time with him than just five stolen
minutes on the high school lawn.

Her nerves were starting to back off a bit by the time
she told him, “I started with all the usual expressions every artist knows
best.” She played it up for him. “Tears. Pain. Suffering. Existential
nothingness.”

His laughter made her feel like she could float all the
way to the art store and back.

“Sounds fun.”

“Oh yeah,” she joked back, “it’s a riot. Which is why I’m
trying something different now.” She took a breath before admitting, “I’m
working on laughter.”

“Laughter, huh?” He grinned at her. “I like it. How’s it
going?”

Being so close to the full wattage of his smile made her
breath catch in her throat. In an effort to cover her all-too-obvious reaction
to him, she scrunched up her face. “Put it this way, I think I’ve started to
resemble all those other expressions.”

“Even the existential nothingness one?”

As if she were watching the two of them from a distance,
Vicki knew she’d always look back to that moment as the one that mattered most.
The one where she fell head over heels in love with Ryan Sullivan. And not
because of his beautiful outside.

But because he’d listened.

And, even better, because he’d appreciated.

“Especially that one,” she replied.

He picked up her bag from the grass. “Sounds awesome.
Mind if I tag along?”

Okay, so maybe the two of them didn’t add up on paper,
but Vicki couldn’t deny that they had clicked.

“Sure,” she said, “if you don’t have anywhere else you
have to be.”

He slung his equipment bag over his other shoulder and
walked beside her. “Nothing more important than hanging out with a new friend.”

This time, she was the one grinning at him. In the two
weeks since she’d moved to Palo Alto with her family, she hadn’t done a very
good job of making friends at the high school. As an Army brat who moved more
years than not, she’d stopped making the effort a long time ago when she
realized how hard it was to not only break into fully formed cliques, but also
to maintain long-distance friendships once she inevitably left town.

Ryan made everything seem so easy, though, as if the only
thing that wouldn’t make sense was their not hanging out.

By the end of their trip to the art store and back, she
knew all about his seven siblings, he knew she had two annoying little
brothers, he’d told her what he liked about baseball, she’d told him what she
loved about sculpting, and she’d been invited to dinner at the Sullivan house.

It was the beginning of a beautiful friendship.

The best one she’d ever had.

* * *

Present day, San Francisco

Ryan Sullivan threw his car keys to the valet as he shot
past him. The young man’s eyes widened as he realized that he was not only
about to drive a Ferrari into the underground parking lot, but that it belonged
to one of his sports idols.

“Mr. Sullivan, sir, don’t you need your valet tag?”

Ryan took his responsibilities to the fans seriously and
made it a point never to let them down. But tonight the only thing that
mattered was Vicki. Even though a half-dozen missed connections over the years
had kept them from meeting up again in person after high school, they’d kept in
touch through email and phone calls.

Vicki was his friend.

And he wouldn’t let anyone hurt one of his friends.

Ryan pushed through the dark glass doors to the exclusive
hotel foyer and made himself stop long enough to do a quick scan of the
glittering room. The Pacific Union Club wasn’t his kind of place—it was
pretentious as all hell—and he hadn’t thought it would be Vicki’s usual
stomping grounds, either.

So why was she here? And why hadn’t she told him she was
finally coming back to Northern California after so many years in Europe?

He’d been hanging at his brother Chase’s new baby
celebration when her texts had come in.

I need your help. Come quick.

Ryan had cursed every one of the thirty-five miles into
the city from his mother’s house on the Peninsula. He’d texted Vicki again and
again to get more information, and to make sure that she was okay, but she
hadn’t replied.

He couldn’t remember the last time he’d been so worried
about anyone...or so ready to do battle. Vicki wasn’t the kind of woman who
cried wolf. She wouldn’t have sent him those texts just to try to get his attention.
She was the only woman he’d ever known apart from his sisters and mother who
had ever been completely real with him, and who didn’t want anything from him
besides his friendship.

His large hands were tight fists as he surveyed the
cocktail lounge, his jaw clenched tight.

Damn it, where was she?

If anyone had touched Vicki the wrong way, or hurt her
even the slightest bit, Ryan would make them pay.

He was famous for being not only the winningest pitcher
in the National Baseball League, but also one of the most laid-back. Very few
people had a clue about Ryan’s hidden edges, but it wouldn’t take much more to
set him off tonight.

He grabbed the first person in uniform, his grip hard
enough on the young man’s upper arm that he winced. “Is there a private meeting
room?”

The young man stuttered, “Y-yes, sir.”

“Where is it?”

His hand shook as he pointed. “On the back side of the
bar, but it’s already reserved toni—”

Ryan hightailed it through the lounge and it shouldn’t
have been that hard to get through the crowd, but it seemed that every single
person in the room either got up to buy another drink or was trying to get his
attention.

When he found a subtly hidden door just to the side of
the bar, he nearly knocked it off its hinges in his hurry to open it.

But his relief was short-lived when he realized he’d
interrupted her and her cocktail companion just as the man’s hand was sliding
onto her thigh.

Vicki jumped off her seat as Ryan strode into the room.
The terror that had been on her face when the other man touched her leg slowly
morphed into relief at his arrival.

Her companion, on the other hand, was clearly surprised
to see Ryan...and he wasn’t happy about it, either. The man was probably in his
fifties and was obviously loaded. Or at least wanted people to think he was,
holding meetings in a place like this, wearing a handmade suit.

Quickly conjuring up an expression of surprise, Vicki said,
“What are you doing here so early, honey?”

So the Sullivan's continue to have good luck when it comes to love. This book is about Ryan the baseball player who likes to play the field because he loves only one woman who can not be his....insert Vicki his best friend. Who by the way also has only been in love with one person but did not want to ruin the perfect friendship so she never acted on her feelings. Insert......drama of unrequited love or is it???????

Ryan and Vicki's story was cute. Sometimes I got frustrated when they both kept doubting and doubting each other until one finally had the balls to make it happen. When this happened boom! Fireworks, love, commitment and friendship.

I loved seeing the other Sullivan's and I am such a sucker for friends that turn into lovers.

1 comment:

Wonderful review! I'm glad you enjoyed reading "Let Me Be The One!" I love friends turned lovers stories! Thanks for taking part in our gigantic tour, and if you have time to cross-post your reviews to Amazon and GoodReads, that would be awesome. :-D

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Blog Posting Update

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